Exercise: Close and involved

For this exercise I needed to switch to the lens with the widest angle I have. I usually keep a Sigma 17-70mm f/1:2.8-4 lens on my camera, I wanted to use a lens I've not really used much at all, a Canon 18-55mm EFS 1:3.5-5.6 IS STM, as the address the wide angle requirement of the exercise I set off to complete task.

A true wide angle, judged from its visual effect, is around 28mm or less. For this exercise I am to use it close to people, trying to achieve a sense of putting the viewer right inside the situation, when taking images with the viewfinder to the eye, this is quite a challenging way to shoot, I used the technique of shooting with the camera held down against my body to the length of the neck strap. I found this technique very easy to carry out as it was pretty much impossible to notice I was taking pictures, it was even easy to take pictures in shops, anywhere in fact, a very useful trick, but there was the danger of not being able to compose the image so quite a bit of practice was needed to guess the angle most likely to achieve the desired results.

The settings for my camera were (RAW) a shutter speed of 1/250 (so that I could shoot quickly through the moving people with minimal blur) which set the aperture automatically, the white balance was set at cloudy, ISO of 100.

Issues encountered during this exercise: I initially used bracketing to ensure a good exposure but found this drew attention due to the continual shooting of the 3 frames so removed the bracketing setting relying on the shutter speed to allow a good enough exposure, after reviewing the images I considered changing the ISO if I felt the exposure wasn't good enough but the natural light was fine. I walked through town from a busy shopping area toward the also busy but tourist area. I had a check at the images I'd taken every few shots and reassessed the angle I was using.